Santa Fe

New Mexico

Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe -- A Photographic History

Release Date: Juni 20, 2008

November 21, 2008 - October 25, 2009

Santa Fe, NM - The Palace of the Governors exhibition, Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, is the Museum's contribution to Santa Fe's celebration of its 400th anniversary. The photographic exhibition opens November 21, 2008 and runs through October 25, 2009.

Since the 1850s many of the most recognized names in photography have focused their lenses in and on Santa Fe. Through their creative efforts they have documented a particular place and its visual history. They helped create that "place" and the mystique of Santa Fe. Photography has long been significant in the construction of notions of space and place, landscape and identity, and especially in Santa Fe, however malleable visual meaning may be, has helped define the geographical imagination.

Curated by photographer and educator Krista Elrick and Palace of the Governors' Curator of Photography, Mary Anne Redding, Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, examines the history of Santa Fe through the visual record created by internationally respected photographers.

Both documentary and fine art photographers were drawn to the region's land, its peoples, the regional architecture, and the quality of light found nowhere else in the world. The project will showcase outstanding photographs that reveal the aesthetic excellence of the artists working in Santa Fe. While the images document the city, they have also been used, historically, as part of the marketing of the Santa Fe image and as a draw to other artists.

The Museum of New Mexico's publication El Palacio, begun in 1913, published high quality reproductions of fine art photography as well as other media. El Palacio was, and still is, used by the MNM museums and the artists who traveled and worked in Santa Fe as a tool to attract more artists to explore Santa Fe for themselves as a focus for their creative work.

In 2005 UNESCO designated Santa Fe as a Creative City, one of only nine cities in the world to hold this honor. Santa Fe is home to many peoples, a destination for many more, all drawn by the aesthetics of this special place that have always been essential to the creative spirit.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press, that examines the history of Santa Fe through the history of photography.

Essayists are:
Frances Levine, Ph. D. - Preface/Introduction
Krista Elrick and Mary Anne Redding - Curators' Statement
David Noble - Santa Fe and Santa Feans: A Four-Hundred-year Journey
Rina Swentzell - In and Around Santa Fe: Anglo Photographers and Tewa Pueblo People
Andy Lovato - Hispanic Identity in a Tourist Town
Mary Anne Redding - Imaging Place
Lucy Lippard - Looking Down: Senses of Place in Santa Fe
Siegfried Halus - At the End of the Trail: Santa Fe and its Photographic Emergence in the late 19th Century

The Museum is working with Santa Fe Community College who is also having a photography exhibition Through the Lens: A Contemporary View of Santa Fe
in their Visual Arts Gallery. Dates are TBD.

Thursday, January 29, 2009, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Gallery Walk Through in conjunction with Santa Fe Community College Reception of Through the Lens: A Contemporary View of Santa Fe
Visual Arts Gallery, Santa Fe Community College
Andy Lovato, author of Santa Fe Hispanic Culture: Preserving Identity in a Tourist Town, Albuqurque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004 will begin his walk through at 5:00 p.m.

Friday, February 20, 2009, Time TBD
Gallery Walk Through with Darius Himes, Photo Editor and Writer, and Founder of Radius Press
Palace of the Governors

March 2009 - date, time, and location TBD
Lecture by Martha Sandweis, author and professor of American Studies and History, Amherst College

July 2009
Photo Arts Month of Photography - Date and Time TBD
Gallery Walk Through with Krista Elrick, fine-art photographer, educator, and co-curator of Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe
Palace of the Governors

Friday, August 14, 2009, 6:00 p.m.
Lecture by David Taylor, 2008 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography, Professor of Photography at New Mexico State University
New Mexico History Museum

Sunday, September 20, 2009
Event planned
Time TBD

Friday, October 23, 2009, 6:00 p.m.
Closing Lecture with Chris Wilson, architectural historian and author of The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
New Mexico History Museum

The Palace of the Governors, built from 1609 to 1610, is the state history museum for New Mexico and is housed in the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States. The museum's collection of more than 17,000 historical objects documents the Spanish Colonial, Mexican, American Territorial, and recent eras in New Mexico history. Items date from the time of the earliest Spanish explorations in the 16th century and chronicle 223 years of Spanish administrative control, 25 years as part of Mexico, 66 years as a territory of the United States, and from statehood in 1912 to the present. The Palace also administers the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library and Photo Archives, The Palace Print Shop & Bindery, and the Portal Program.

The Palace of the Governors is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.
Information for the Public: The Palace of the Governors is located on the Plaza in Santa Fe at 105 West Palace Avenue.
Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M.
Open Free on Fridays, 5:00- 8:00 P.M., with the exception of major exhibition openings.

Admission Prices: School groups free. Children 16 and under free.
New Mexico residents with I.D. free on Sundays.
New Mexico resident Senior Citizens (age 60+) with I.D. free Wednesdays.
Museum Foundation members free. Students with I.D. $1 discount.
Single visit to one museum: $8.00 for non-state residents; $6.00 for New Mexico residents.
Four day pass to five museums including state-run museums in Santa Fe plus The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art $18.00.
One day pass for two museums (Museum of International Folk Art and Museum of Indian Arts and Culture OR New Mexico Museum
of Art and Palace of the Governors) $12.00.
Group rate for ten or more people: single visit $6.00, four day pass $16.00.

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